How is it, yesterday, it snows and I stay home and work from home and everyone else comes in to work and today, it snows and I come into work and everyone else works from home? The roads are a mess. And here I am, sitting in my cold friggin’ office. Ah well. The interwebs will keep me warm. And I haven’t checked, but I have a sinking feel there isn’t a new episode of Chuck for me to watch. It’s a tragedy I tell you.
My exciting weekend was doing something I thought I would never do. I leveled fishing. All the way to 284. I am 80 fish from the 1000 fish achievement. And I want to gouge my eyes out. Such “positive reinforcement” why I never leveled it before. But dang it, no Chef title unless I do it.
But that’s not the only thing I did, as you can imagine by the post title. I dropped a 51-point talent into Beast Mastery so I could go hunt Loque’nahak. And by hunt, I mean tame, of course. Right now the cat is sub-par and anyone who tells you otherwise is lying to you or believing a magnificent lie. As it stands, Loque’nahak’s ability, Spirit Strike, is not affected by Longevity. More specifically, the 85-115 Arcane damage that comes 10 seconds later is not affected. The cooldown will be shortened to 7 seconds, but the spirit beast will reapply the affect and the second half of the damage will never go off.
(Correction: The current bugged functionality I am told, since I don’t have one to test myself, is that the spirit beast will actually delay casting Spirit Strike until the second portion of damage goes off. Since that still takes 10 seconds to activate, Longevity lowering the cooldown of the ability to 7 seconds makes no difference in the current game)
Now this is being fixed in the patch so it will make the pet a bit more desirable. And with the 50/21 nerf looming down on us, we want to be prepared for whatever build will be bringing the best DPS. And there is a good reason to try and tame Loque’nahak. Well, other than looking awesome of course. Not only will the ability scale with attack power, there is reason to believe that the ability will make great use of raid buffs.
I read this line of thinking over at Ferocious Inspiration/Hunter’s Terrace when it was brought up. As he posted it:
The Spirit Beast now scales ridiculously well with full raid buffs. They get the whole +13% spell damage and +spell power buffs from raid stuff added to Spirit Strike. Now in a raid situation it should be a top contending pet.
While I take every rumor with a grain of salt, this is not some random hunter in blues and greens who post on the Hunter Forums in the “what do I name my core hound?” threads. I see no reason to see why he would intentionally spread disinformation, but yah never know. WTB PTR 25 man raids for testing :)
There is sound reasoning to this line of thinking but can’t be completely confirmed yet. That’s why I figure it’s safe to make an effort to tame it now. I know a lot of Hunters have been camping this poor guy for a while now and I am the “new comer” in the “sitting around waiting for the spawn” club. :)
But at least I got a lot of farming in. I tamed myself a temp rhino named WruLoq and picked lots of herbs. Lots. Like 700g worth last night. So I can’t say I didn’t get anything out of it. I figure this was a good week to try for this thing since raiding is technically postponed due to holidays and people traveling. And the people in general chat made it interesting. Random person accused of being a ninja. Swearing commences. Reminder that said person ninja’d heroic loot. Accused ninja scoffs at the allegation. Comments about heroics being “srs bznss.” Good times had by all. I also need to reprice the materials for flasks and see if it is once again profitable to purchase the raw materials and re-sell the flasks. For a while there, the herb prices went up and flask prices didn’t. We’ll see.
As another possible spec, word on the street is that Explosive Shot is scaling very well as Blizzard attempts to un-nerf Survival after realizing the Steady Shot change is going to hammer all specs, not just BM.
Nothing too exciting in today’s post. Tonight is my niece’s birthday. The same niece who ran the election dinner. Most people who have birthday’s close to Christmas usually get screwed but her parents do a great job of keeping them separate. No Christmas stuff on the birthday!
Well, that’s all for now. I will probably make a post tomorrow at some time although I can’t guarantee it, you know, being Christmas Eve and all. So if I don’t, everyone have a wonderful holiday. Be safe and enjoy whatever you might be doing. Thoughts, comments, etc. Leave ‘em here. See you all back here on Friday. :)
Drotara (or BehemothDan) considers himself a geek on many levels. A web developer and programmer by trade, he has no shortage of geeky hobbies. Whether it's trying to stay current in World of Warcraft raiding, playing competitively in the WoW TCG, Magic: The Gathering with friends, or a night at the local shop playing DnD, it's all good to him!
Good luck with Loq. I’ll be sticking with a scorpid if the current PTR build makes it live; the scorpid “nerf” consisted of changing its 5 percent spell coef to the same 4.28 coef everything else (besides spirit strike) uses. It’s not nearly enough of a nerf to dethrone the scorp as the single-target dps king unless spirit strike really exceeds expectations. Nonetheless, I do wish you luck- some good competition between cat/loq/devilsaurs/scorpid would bring a nice break to the current raid monotony of “1 scorpid and the rest cats.”
Speaking of things making it live, PTR survival is testing out *higher* than live 50/21/0 BM. I have to believe explosive shot will get re-nerfed before it goes live… though I admittedly hope it doesn’t, I actually enjoy raiding SV when one of our replenishers isn’t around/has to spec healing, and I’d love to go that route full-time.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v167/Mistimus/spiritbeastspawnmap.jpg
Mine spawned where the arrow is currently (at 12:29 server actually, if that has any impact for you), but this isn’t my image, just forwarding it in case you haven’t seen it before. Good luck on your hunt for Loque’nahak. :P
I enjoy Survival as well. If ES stays in it’s current form I will probably go that spec. But just gotta be prepared. :)
Well, PTR Surv is that wacky trapdance build, right? It’d just take a tweak to LnL to break that. Not a re-nerf to Explosive Shot. For the love of god, not that. I’m soooo tired of spamming 2.
And wait, it took Blizz more than 3 seconds to realize that SS is our only direct damage shot without a CD, and nerfing it would hurt all specs?
I should probably get on the Loque taming train, bye Core Hound, couldn’t come up with a good name for you anyway.
Haha. Naming Corehounds. Good times to be had by all. :)
I am hearing the same thing, the trapdance build coming from different sites. Zeuxis even brought it up on the older post, White Raider’s can’t Dance. Since we didn’t patch today (would Blizz really want to deal with patch problems the day before Christmas?) I think there is some time to see what gets tweaked.
Quote: More specifically, the 85-115 Arcane damage that comes 10 seconds later it not affected. The cooldown will be shortened to 7 seconds, but the spirit beast will reapply the affect and the second half of the damage will never go off.
Actually, Loque doesn’t reapply Spirit Strike until it has worn off (currently). You never lose that second half. It just delays re-casting with the cooldown set to 10 seconds. I don’t see how lowering the cooldown to 7 seconds will cause the second half to never go off.
@Rauk Thanks for the correction. The change is meant it so the time for the second half of the damage is shortened to 7 seconds with Longevity so the recasting is not delayed, as you described.
Drotara’s last blog post..Friday Ramblings: White Raiders can’t Dance
@Shmii Those were the 5 places I was checking. Thanks for the map regardless. I just kept making circles picking herbs and mashing my targeting macro. :)
Never had problems naming the Core Hounds (ACH = Loki, Omen = Fenrir) but I have had problems pulling them out. Pre expansion I didn’t have the points to get GFTT so the Core Hounds were almost useless since they were focus starved. The Devilsaur on the other hand out performed my old Wolf without issue. Since then I’ve been using a Gorilla to solo and the Devilsaur when I hit instances (and keeping both leveled has NOT been a problem) and haven’t pulled out the Hounds since 70. :(
I’ve spent a little time trying to get a shot at Loque…. don’t think it’s happening for a while on Earthen Ring. There’s always at least 2 hunters per spot (one Horde one Alliance) and at least one of them in /1 offering cash for someone to spot the beast and “turn it in”…
I logged on and had a Hunter who was out hunting it last night tell me he tamed it 5 minutes ago. :( At that point I said screw it and went back to 50/21 for now.
Drotara’s last blog post..Friday Ramblings: White Raiders can’t Dance
About patch comming up and loque’nahak; I have to agree. One cannot be enough prepared with the new patch comming in.
I’m currently playing at EU – SIlvermoon, which means everyone is Alliance (first orc hitting 80 just a few days ago http://i139.photobucket.com/albums/q313/TheRhon/horde80.jpg ). That further means that the Loque’nahak can be rather depressing with atleast five people per nighishift (00.00-0600) are willing to camp the rare spawn out.
I eventually were about to give up, raiding mostly I can’t make use of Loq just yet. I decided to search the web for any comments about “the hunt” that I could find. Given that I have to this date found and tamed every rarespawn “because I can” pre TBC I wasnt too proud about leaving the Loq to someone else.
What people mostly say out on the web is that they “were just about to give up”, “I had stopped looking for him”, “I was just logging on/off” etc.
I totally buy the fact that it’s usually those people that experience such a suprise that would post about it to start with, sure. That said, I wanted to test this very unlikely “thesis” out.
I put alot of effort into -not- camping for Loque’nahak, I took up on any offer to help someone else (esp. in another zone) which would steal time. I logged off to watch some TV at any given moment I felt that I was actually waiting for the spawn. Herbalist as I am i could go for herbs only, knowingly ignoring track beast or any target macro for Loq.
Up to the time I had camped I estimate about 25 hours were spent wasting my time camping from the time i hit 76 until I started the new tactic. Time spent “uncamping loq” took me 2 hours..
Now. I’m not a big fan of jinxes, luck or anything simular. I’m not good with math, but I do put my trust into numbers and statistics. So this tactic was a bit off the grid to say the least I admit.
Still got him, while uncamping him. Small note; same tactic worked with Time-lost protodrake.
That said, I havent proved sh*t ;)
About herbprice vs flaskprice: Prices doubled at our server aswell the same day Darkmoon Faire was up due to herbs -> milling herbs for ink -> making card of the north -> Nobles deck -> AH price of 10 k -> Greatness trinket. I didnt get the card, but i -did- get about 6k gold in one day by selling herbs. Next DMF is at the start of January, I will either get rich or get a new trinket. ;)
Merry Christmas (24th of Dec is our big day for christmas) to you Drotara, don’t give up.
I have just one thing to add regarding the said “holy grail” of pretty pet hunters, I got myself into an obsessive state over Loq (20 hours). Then I found myself changing to sv, partially to break the obsession and partially to play with sv pre bm nerf. then a few weeks later decided to go back to BM (maybe it was less, seamed a long time with no BW). Anyways, after i decided to make some gold and eventually start questing in Shol instead of trolling it looking for Loq i ended up with King Krush when he spawned infront of me during a leather/mammoth chunk frenzy I was having at Glimmering pillar, the beast spawned 3 days in a row at the same point . Just on the soth of the pillar, actually right on the pillar if you were looking at the map. i then thought to myself ok this is three times i have seen this beast, once to tame and twice to kill for Northern Exposure acheivment and for a third time I spammed general for wanton hunters (none :S), mibbes time to give the 6 hour next rare spawn theory a test and hey presto, 6 hours almost to the minute outside nessingwary up pops Loque….so 3/4 heart papitations later i have him…broken or not he’s a beauty….don’t give up.
Hey all
Took me over 3 months sitting in the basin ,being removed from my guild ohhh well i am proud to say i log on around 6 am from my laptop at work i flew for maybe 2 secs and landed right on top of loque….drop ice trap and tamed him i call it a her just cause lol
i have to say i was kinda annoyed at the fact how rare this cat is but when i finaly tamed , the hunt for her was truly worth the effort she is amazing to look at and dps will be mucho better hopefully blizz will let us keep exotic pets and respect and still use the exotic pets cause i wnat to go survival but with loque in my stable i will stay bm fo sho